Subjets and learning - Por la inclusión…

•
Subjets and learning
MINISTRY OF CULTURE, SCIENCE
ORGANIZATION OF THE AMERICNA STATES
AND TECHNOLOGY
INTER AMERICAN AGENCY FOR THE
COOPERATION AND DEVELOpmEnT
Subjects and learning
This publication was developed in the frame
of the Hemispheric Project: "Preparation of
policies and strategies for the prevention of
school failure" , co o r d in a ted b y th e
M in is tr y o f Ed u cat io n , S ci en ce an d
Tech n o lo g y o f th e Rep u b l ic o f
Argentina
and
financed
by
the
Organization of the American States
(OEA), through the Special Multilateral Fund
of the Interamerican Council for the Integral
Development
(FEMCIDI/OEA).
The
opinions expressed are not necessarily the
opinions of the OEA, nor its organs and
officers.
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Lic. Daniel Filmus
SECRETARY OF EDUCATION
Lic. Juan Carlos Tedesco
SUBSECRETARY OF EQUITY AN D QUALITY
Lic. Alejandra Birgin
SUBSECRETARY OF EDUCATION PLANNING
Lic. Osvaldo Devries
NATIONAL DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
Lic. Miguel G. Vallone
NATIONAL DIRECTOR OF COMPENSOTARY PROGRAMS
Lic. María Eugenia Bernal
NATIONAL DIRECTOR OF CURRICULUM MANAGEMENT AND TEACHER FORMATION
Lic. Laura Pitman
NATIONAL DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION AND ASSESSMENT OF THE EDUCATION QUALITY
Lic. Marta Kisilevsky
Argentina. Ministerio de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología de la Nación
Sujetos y aprendizaje - 1a ed. - Buenos Aires : Ministerio de Educación, Ciencia
y Tecnología de la Nación: Ministerio de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología de la
Nación, 2006.
63 p. ; 24x17 cm.
ISBN 950-00-0283-3
1. Educación. I. Título
CDD 370
GENERAL COORDINATION OF THE
PROJECT
PRODUCTION OF THE DOCUMENTS
Patricia Maddonni
Miguel G. Vallone
AUTHOR
EXECUTIVE COORDINATION
Ignacio Balard
Ricardo Baquero
DIDACTIC PROCESSING
PEDAGOGIC COORDINATION
Patricia Maddonni
Noemí Aizencang
Gabriela Kantarovich
Victoria Orce
ASSISTANCE IN THE COORDINATION
Sebastián Pilo
COORDINATION AN D SUPERVISION OF THE
EDITION
Ana Carolina López
COLLABORATION IN THE EDITION
Fernanda Benitez Liberali
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Ricardo Penney
Ministry of Education, Science
and Technology
Organization of the American States
Inter American Agency for the Cooperation
and Development (AICD)
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
Introduction
This document forms part of a series of materials prepared to the
interior of the Hemispheric Project “Elaboración de políticas para la
prevención del fracaso escolar”,(“Preparation of policies for the
prevention of the school failure”, sub region MERCOSUR
Each one of these texts have the purpose of contributing with
reflections, conceptualizations and keys to understand the core
problems that the region is going through. The relation between
poverty and education, social and education un-equalness, school bond
and community, learning and teaching in critical situations.
The receivers of these materials are teachers of different levels and
moods of the education system that form part of the countries of the
MERCOSUR.
The conceptual developments of each document are accompanied by
activities and suggestions, with the purpose of widening and deepening
the proposed subjects.
In the same way, this series of documents is going to be available in the
web page of the Project: http://tq.educ.ar/fracasoescolar
It is expected that these materials are shared among colleagues, in
spaces of formation, reflection and training.
5
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
9
SUBJECTS AND THEIR POSSIBILITY OF LEARNING
A basic and central debate: What is understood by educability
A persistent hypothesis: Who fails at school carries some deficit
11
15
THE MODERN CONCEPT OF DEVELOPMENT
AND ITS REPERCUSSION IN THE ROOMS
21
THE PROCESSES OF SCHOOLING AND THE
FORMATION OF THE MODERN CHILDHOOD
24
THE SCHOOL LEARNING, ITS SPECIFICATION
AND ITS SUBJECTS
30
The School learning
30
The hypothesis of discontinuity between the cognitive development
in daily and school contexts
32
The experience and value components that order
The school experience
35
The demands of the cognitive work
36
A change of perspective: switch the focus of the person to the situation
39
Participation and appropriation: two key concepts to understand how
we learn at school
44
BIBLIOGRAPHY
50
APPENDIX I
53
APPENDIX II
55
APPENDIX III
60
APPENDIX IV
61
APPENDIX V
62
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
Introduction
To approach the subject of Learning and the subject in the context of the
Mercosur and the project that protects these productions, claims to answer a
demand that orders our emergencies in the daily lives of our schools. Two
subjects, in our opinion, should go through our reflections over learning and
the subjects. On one side, how to recover the trustworthiness in the
possibilities of learning and the development of our young adults and children
and, in solidarity with this, how to recover the trustworthiness in the
possibility of generating genuine and powerful education experiences that
allow its full appropriation of the school space. The persistence on these two
focus does not obey only to the concern raised from academic spheres of the
psychology and the pedagogy.
As it is already known, it has been installed in Latin America the concern
and the debate over the possibilities and limits that seem to have the
education action, mainly in the relation with the possibilities of attention
to children and young adults coming from the popular sectors. Curiously,
a problem as old as the one of the school inclusion of the children that
suffer poverty or that belong to the minority, seems to be recurrent on the
debate in different education spheres, from international organisms to the
academic production (Please see Artiles, 2003).
What is curious, in fact, is not found in the presence of the subject due to
the persistence or growth of the poverty conditions. What has
undoubtedly deserved special attention, and some debate somehow
energetic, has been the questioned and sad meaning given in occasions to
this old problem, when stating it as a suspicion over the fact if the children
and the young adults that have to endure difficult and tough raising
conditions and life, result to be educative subjects. This is, the suspicion is
installed if the children and the young adults of these sectors achieve to
gather a kind of requirements that are judged to be necessary for the
successful learning at school in the current conditions. This subject has
given way, in particular in Argentina, to a justified debate (Please see
Lóp ez, N. y Ted esco , J. C., 2002; Bello , M., 2002; Ló pez, N.,
2 00 4; VVAA, 20 04; Frigerio, 2004 ; Neufeld , M. R. y Thisted, J. A.,
2004; Baquero, R., 2001, 2003).
9
PROYECTO HEMISFÉRICO
In a way, and in a simplified manner, but not lacking risky and deep
effects, education is understood as a "learning capacity" learnt by the
subjects. This is, the evident rates of low performances, high desertions
or repetition, for not adding the difficult figures of reconstruction of the
promotion of students without the basic foreseen achievements, seem to
explain by the appealing of supposed deficit conditions that the students
may carry.
As may be understood by the colleagues that get in contact with this
document, there is no intention of minimizing in no way the hard
conditions of the life of our children and young adults, nor the evident
and historic difficulties that are many times submitted and generate
“successful” education experiences destined to the most damaged
sectors. The sole intention is to highlight a core problem: It is possible
and necessary to get suspicious of the apparent evidence of the
common sense that pretends to find in the same students the
reasons of the failure. There are political reasons to impose this
demand of the region and the time. How are we going to approach an
emancipating education if we suspect of the mere possibility of
appropriation of basic learning on behalf of our students? We also have
theoretical deep reasons to suspect of the old and rude conceptual tools
that take us to a street with no exit of the supposed deficit of our
students, or their families, or their languages, etc. Finally, and perhaps
most importantly, we also have, luckily, the testimony of many
education experiences that are powerful even in those conditions in
which the common sense, when not some theoretical productions, saw
an inexorable horizon for the school destiny of the students.
Our task in this document is to challenge the look of common sense, the
one that says that the subjects that carry out “normal” conditions,
perceived as “natural” to learn and in line with that, we would try to
reflect over the political sense of the school experience, taking school as
a historic and politically constructed space. In this way we would be
able to discuss the frequent and recurrent suspicion that is present
around the nature, biological, social, ethnical or cultural, of the children
and young adults that are not adjusted to the format that their own
school proposes and imposes.
10
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
The subjects and their
possibilities of learning
A basic and central debate:
What is understood by educability
The discussion around the education or the conditions of education
did not only remit to the debates given in the community of
professionals or academics, but also
illustrates,
undoubtedly,
the
Educability refers to an old category of
concerns going through our daily
the Pedagogy to which, for example,
school, our mission as educators.
Herbart gave the status of fundamental to
At the end, the documents referred
the pedagogy. The concept of educability
to provide a debate which
is associated to the possibilities of being
emergency obeys to the fact that
educated, of being ductile and with
adaptability, having distinctive marks
they seem to reinforce a sad
with the possibilities of learning from
perception of the common sense of
other species. Ahead of the changing or
the impossibility of learning
varied possibilities pursuant to the factors
explained in appearance, as we
that influence the learning, the nonalready stated, by the deficitary
finished or opened feature of the human
nature that is stated, its incompleteness
condition deficitaria of the children
The vision over the educability is very
or their families.
different if conceived its nature similar to
In the first term, it is important to
the training or the conditioning, while or
perceive why is the fact of
even if we consider that it is about the
assuming an answer of no
perfectability of the human being,
considering the educative as a preconstitution of an educable subject
established end, and sole, determined by
is seriously judged when referring
the essence of the subjects. As it is
to the reasons by which it was not
indicated in the text, the positions of the
possible to achieve satisfactory
“deficit” are similar to the essentialist
learning, children and young adults
positions. Such has been the traditional
case of the use of the category in the
in particular of popular sectors. The
Education cannot be compared to
the “ability to learn”. In fact, there
is a double limitation, in its habitual
formulation in the common sense
special education. The essentialist models
have a normative and ideal vision over
how the subjects should be by making an
abstraction, on the other hand, of the
conditions that generate the own
education practice, that
11
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
se la percibe como natural y normalizada- en
abrir posibilidades para el despliegue de los
sujetos. Como visión contrapuesta se propone la concepción de lo humano como potencia vs esencia. Como afirma Paturet siguiendo a Agamben, “Si la educabilidad no es ni
adiestramiento, ni condicionamiento, ni perfectibilidad, sino simplemente reconocimiento
de la potencia de ser del hombre, significa
entonces la capacidad humana de una renovación permanente, de una no-finitud, de una
esencia inesencial que hace posibles nuevos
despliegues” (Paturet, 2003:114)
Paturet, J-B (2003) “Educabilidad” en Jean
Houssaye
(coord.)
Cuestiones
pedagógicas.
Enciclopedia histórica, México: Siglo XXI.
Jean – Jacques
Rousseau
French philosopher and writer (17121778). For his love to the feelings and
the nature, he is considered one of the
precursor
of
the
Romanticism.
His
thinking exerted a great influence over
the ideals of the French Revolution and
in
favor of
democratic
the expansion
ideas.
Author
of
of
the
many
works, among the most popular, we can
find Discurso sobre las ciencias y las artes
(1749) Emilio, o de la educación (1762),
Contrato Social (1762).
12
. First, the education, as it is known,
reminds a specific attribute of the human
being, a distinctive note that makes
reference to some kind of incompleteness
of the nature of the baby human being
that needs its appropriation on behalf of a
culture to be able to constitute himself in
a subject.
That is to say, far away from the
possibility of achieving learning, though
supposed, under the figure of an almost
infinite malleability as in Rousseau or,
already measurable, as in Herbart, refers
to the fact that in some way it explains a
crucial feature of humanization.
As it is evident, learning is not an
excluding attribute of the human being,
in such a way that we cannot consider the
animal psychology questions to infer or
analyze many learning processes —more
or less simple or more or less complex
that illuminate, for example, common or
different aspects between humans and the
rest of the species. It is enough to
remember the works over learning for the
conditioning on learning of the
conductist tradition or its use as a
technique to infer, the laws of the
Superior Nervous Activity in the work of
Pavlov, to find evidence over this
possibility of assisting to animal learning
processes and its possible comparison with
the human learning.
Thus, in the meantime, the proper of the
human is not this capacity of learning.
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
per se, but,
in any case, the possibilities of
constituting a subject of one culture.
J Joann Friedrich H er b ar t
Please remember how in the work of the
classic pedagogyst, like in Comenius, it
obviously appeared as an unquestioned
German phylosopher and pedagogist. (1776-,
data. Up to that degree, for this author,
1841) In Switzerland, he studied the methods
the educability appears as an attribute of
of Pestalozzi. He was professor in Gotinga and
the human being, from there the
in Königsberg, where he cucceed Kant. He is
viability of the pansophic ideal of
the author of Pedagogía general (1806), La
teaching all to everybody, the reluctance
psicología como ciencia (1824-1825) and Metafísica
to the education methods that made
general (1828-1829)
suspicious the reluctant "human
Herbart was the first in defining Psychology
monsters" anomalies of the nature to be
as a separate science of the Philosophy and
exceptional. As we said before, in
the Physiology, and in granting Pedagogy
another site, the “in educability” does
with a scientific status. His most outstanding
not seem to apply, unfortunately, to the
contribution was the formulation of a learning
big number of our poor young adults
theory, the one that he called “ T h eo ry o f
and children. The suspicion for the
Appreciation”, as from the laws of association
educability meant for Comenius,
of Locke and of the dochtrine of the powers.
thus, an inevitable suspicion for the
nature of the subject. The interesting
thing is to note how, in the work of
Comenius, to be aware of the diverse nature of the students, the diversity of the
talents and willingness, and a method was supposed to be designed that,
although it inaugurated the fiction of being able to face that diversity, by
homogenous means, it meant a viable and needed company of a construction
and an occupation. This means, the method had to catch the immense variety
and majority of subjects. Please remember that the refractors to education
should be strange things of nature. In other words, the order of a learning
practice should be such that it produces a positive effect in the immense
majority of subjects.
Even more, if some students were not very available or able should be due to
the fatherhood raise, more than for their nature. Apparently, its seems a similar
argument to the modern one. The modern practices of raise, social nature of the
subjects that place them at lease as apparently non educable. However,
Comenius, the father of the Magna Didactic, seemed somewhat more optimistic
than many of our contemporary ones. He understood that the teacher should
generate the educability conditions of the subjects. “If a table is damaged,
polish it”, etc. Please understand that this is the opposite notion to the one of
requiring the
13
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
He was born on March 28, 1932 in
Moravia, current Check Republic. His Check
name is Juan Amos Komensk . He was a
theologist, philosopher and pedagogist.
The didáctica Magna (1632) is considered
one of the founding works of modern
pedagogy in which you can observe the
positions of simultaneity, graduality and
universality of the modern school (cf.
Narodowski, 1994).
Reading suggestions
If you are interested in Getting deeper in the
ideas of Comenius, we suggest you to read
D idác tic a M agn a d e Comenius J, A. (1986)
Madrid, Akal First edition in 1932. Translation
of Saturino López Peses (first edition of the
translation
subjects to submit a series of initial
conditions of admission, as to ensure a
happy teaching. In Comenius, it is the
own didactic of the teacher, the one that
considering the features of the student,
generates the conditions for his
education. Something a little different
to judge than the action of the school
that is limited, when not impeded, by
the incapacity of the families of
producing “educable subjects”.
To think among
colleagues
There are different ways of referring to the
concept of educability. Below, we give you some
definitions
to
discuss
and
reflect
among
colleagues:
- “The educability can be defined as the plasticity
or ductibility of the person to be molded and
transformed by the influence of the multiple
education stimuli. That is, in other terms,
educability is the ability that pertains to the
human being to be transformed through the
successive education efforts.
(Manganiello, Introducción a las Ciencias de la
Educación, 1970: 34)
- “(... ) we state the educability of the man, but
acknowledge its limitations. Education is possible,
but has its insurmountable limits in the nature of the
student. The education cannot do it all, as the
empirics pretended, but exerts so big an influence
that is creates quite frequently a second nature
(Manganiello 1982) the underline is ours.
14
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
A persistent hypothesis: He who fails at
school carries some deficit
It is usual to approach psycho-education approaches, as we said before,
to appeal to the explanation of the reasons of the failure in the learning,
referring to the fact that the subjects contribute with apparently "deficit"
conditions. The deficits are usually marked as changing in the different
times, but seem to continue as a privileged observance about the
students. As it is known, for example, we have meant or we continue
meaning with relative frequency as deficit conditions or delays, in the
development of the processes of the sensor-motor type, the reasons that
would explain the difficulties to learn and write of many children.
Although it is true that there are children that may have pictures that
deserve some interventions of a clinical type or a more personalized
attention, we know that, honestly speaking, the possibilities and the
process of the learning of reading and writing are far from being defined
nor explained by the levels of maturity in the sensor-motor aspects of the
subjects.
From many psychological traditions, from the cognitive psychology to the
genetic psychology, and the socio-cultural approaches, it is considered as
crucial for the understanding of these learning, to get to know the nature
of its process of acquisition, construction or appropriation, always
complex ones. That is to say, in any way, that this is about complex
processes of cognitive construction and appropriation of specific cultural
practices, irreducible to the processes of maturity or mere sensorperceptive decodification. Does this mean to deny the existence of acute
disorders in the sensor motor layer or even the cognitive? In no way,
however it does circumscribe and differentiate the problem of the need
of a specific attention of the students that need it from the common and
dramatic problem of massive school failure strongly associated to the social
origin of the students (Lus, M. A. 1995).
In the absence of a better name and to understand it, we are used to call
as massive school failure the high rates or repetitions,
15
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
abandonment and low performances of the students. This not very nice name.
It obeys the same significance of “failure”, but, above all, the fact that with
many frequency it is born from the supposed idea that he who fails is the
student. As it is already recurrent to point out, and even when the name of
failure continues being not the most ideal one, in any case, it is necessary to
point out that the one who fails is the school, as not having been able to
generate the expected learning in the students. Nevertheless, the fact that it
persists, the idea that the ones who fail are the students, obeys to the close
school logic and to the budget that we are analyzing over its supposed deficits.
Following in part María Angélica Lus, we can find, in general, three positions
over the reasons attributed to the massive school failure:
•
Positions centered in the student: The most classical positions, though
highly in force, tend to search the reasons of failure in aspects that make
the student, as we already observed, matters related to his maturity as his
psychological or intellectual development.
•
Positions centered in the social and familiar conditions of the student: Many
times the supposed explanation of massive school failure is focused on the
difficult conditions of the life of the children and the young, generally
belonging to the popular sectors.
•
Positions centered in the relation student-school: This is about positions
that try to catch the problem in the interaction of the features of the students
and the school practices.
In the frame of the positions centered in the student, the most classical
positions answered the problem from a clinical-medical or pathological,
individual approach. The students that were
Thinking among
not adapted to the pedagogical proposal and
Colleagues
the school expectations of performance were
It can be interesting to open a space to
suspected of having any abnormality. If the
discuss among colleagues over the
learning is not produced, the reason of this
insistence and persistence in the schools
not learning can be looked in the internal
of “the hypothesis of the deficit” that is
described b the author.
layers of the subject. From the grotesque
16
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
craneometry to the deep psychometrics, a powerful technology has
developed, applied to students and addressed to assess and forecast their
possibilities of learning. The appearance and the consolidation of the
discipline and the psycho-education practices were signaled, in a good
measure, by the obsession of classifying the students in accordance with
their level or way of education.
As it is shall be understood in these positions, the notion of deficit, delay
or deferral quickly acquire their shape. There are the students the ones
that are not in a condition of learning. The trust of Comenius in that
there are few the natural alterations, the non educable human monsters,
at the end, was a trust in some way, in the generosity of the divine
creation, he is submitted to a kind of systematic catholic control of the
quality of the students, be stated the irony. The Comenian trust does not
appear also, that the teacher shall find the appropriate method to assist
the diversity of talents and willingness. At least, not in the space of a
common education.
Once again, it has to be taken into account, that we are making reference
to the massive school failure. The one that affects a high and considerable
portion of the school population. From this perspective, it seems to
generalize all those who have low achievements to have an only
relevant logic and many times, with no repairs, to the not numerous
cases that deserve clinical interventions. In this way, the massive school
failure is understood as a sum of individual failures.
The second perspective, that centered in the social or familiar conditions
of life, that is, in some way, the one that is situated under criticism at the
beginning of this work. This perspective warns that the children and the
young do not have or do not access the necessary resources to sustain,
then, a successful scholar life. These resources are material as well as
symbolic ones, and they are measured in accordance with what seems to
be perceived at school as necessary conditions for a non problematic
scholar life.
What now seems to be of importance when describing the conditions
that the children should carry to learn in a satisfactory way, it is not
always relative to its maturity or level of intellectual development. It is
centered in the socio-affective conditions or socio-economic-cultural
conditions of the children.
17
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
And the adults too. From the suspicious by the brains, we went to the
suspicion of the families, the cultures, the ways of raising, of speaking,
the game of the subjects, etc.
This perspective deserves some clarifications of importance over what
he is proposed to work in this chapter. At the beginning, it has a virtue
to be attended, and it is the one of having claimed with recurrence the
cruel relations between massive school failure and the situations of
poverty or exclusion. In a frame that goes from the subjects of the poor
neighbors of the big cities, to the children of the fields or belonging to
the minority, this persistent relation can be shown between school
failure and the social origin of the students (Lus, 1995; Artiles, 2003). In
this sense, this look commonly taken over this problem, has the positive
effect of begging for the insistent improvement in the life conditions of
the children and the young, assisting in some way, to the relation
between conditions of the vital daily and the effective possibilities of
learning. However, it should be noted that, although this second
perspective seems to substantially differentiate from the first, in truth, as
stated a long time ago, it does not seem to move ahead from the old
conception of the deficit.
It is convenient to remember once again that it is essential to distinguish
the confirmation of certain relations or phenomenon (the evident fact
that the massive school failure impacts in a differential way over the
students of popular sectors) and the way in which this means or try to
explain these relations. That is to say, our common sense is usually
trapped by the confirmation of the relation poor-school failure, as it
carries in itself the reasons of its explanation. Even when we know that
not all the subjects of popular sectors fail and that the subjects of other
sectors, more favored ones, are far away from having a successful
school life.
As stated before, the problem in this perspective lies in the truth that the
fact seems to approach the problem by “taking care of” the social,
economic or cultural situation of the subjects, and at the end, of the
social nature of the problem of the school failure, however, honestly, it
does not apply the same logic to analyze the same school dynamic. That
is, the social is analyzed as an external factor to the learning process.
18
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
And it affects the school learning process as a condition of the
environment, as an external variable. As we are going to observe later,
this vision could be opposed by another that understands the nature of
the processes of schooling and the developments and learning produced
in its core, that are of the same social and political nature. This is the
reference made to the third reading over announced failure.
Thus, from this perspective, it seems to be understood that the conditions
effectively carried out by the subjects of popular sectors or by minorities
are honestly deficitiaries. It is probable that this description, in the logic
of this perspective, is not wrong, since it comes from what we
understand and shall later analyze as a naturalized look of the school
space. Even when the failures of the school space are acknowledged and
a big portion of its obvious limitations, there is no doubt that the keys of
failure lie in the conditions of starting point or possible support of the
learning of the students and their families.
The third perspective is that centered in the relations student-school, and
it makes reference to the fact that the reasons of the massive school
failure nor its nature cannot be submitted by making an abstraction, as
we said before, of the same nature of the school space. We can find
within this perspective, as in the other ones, some diverse emphasis and
scopes. As a common aspect, it can be stated that the school imposes the
highly homogeneous working conditions, that make an impact over the
clearly heterogeneous population and that the attribution of the reasons
of the school failure to the unbalance of the conditions that carry out
great part of the school population, can only be made over the basis of
judging these school conditions as optimal, natural or impossible of
being modified. However, please understand well the consequences of
what is being discussed, even when the conditions of the school failure
are judged as with no remedy or not improvable, nothing justifies its
significance as deficitiaries to the conditions carried out by the subjects.
It is a problem of deep consequences and of political effects not always
perceived. When the school action comes into the daily life of the
subjects, it proposes conditions to learn, honestly debatable in many
cases, and judges the capacity of the subjects or the communities in
accordance with their capacity of adaptation or adjustment to the
19
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
conditions imposed, it may operate knowingly or not, in a violent way and
authoritative, excluding in the facts the same apparent act of including. That
means, the school learning is not the mere acquisition of abilities or knowledge
described as a psychological-individual process of performance of the
childhood nature, sufficiently or appropriately encouraged, but, that the
learning process in the school frame should be observed as a powerful mutual
process of appropriation between the subject and the culture. This process
carries out unavoidable disputes and, as it shall be observed, cannot be reduced
at all to a "technical" problem, unless we simulate its highly political nature. In
such sense, the tense relation to which we attend between school expectations
of the conditions of starting point that the children and the young adults should
have when entering and the ones that they effectively have, should be
examined with care.
Said in another way, this perspective calls out over the risks of the positions
centered in the notion of deficit as an explanation of the massive school failure.
It submits the perspectives centered in the deficit seem to stem from, at least, a
double naturalization of the development processes and the school space. In
this way it seems to be understood the school space, as designed to optimize
the learning of the subjects, as an optimums space, natural or at least, neutral,
to encourage the development and produce learning in the subjects. In the
same way, it is judged, the processes of development of the subjects as natural
an even ones, as if the subjects only express levels or ways of the same natural
development. In this line, the development of the subjects is perceived in the
facts as a process that should be harmonized in a natural way with the school
space and if this is not done, something may be broken in its nature.
Throughout this paragraph, three perspectives have been analyzed over the
reasons attributed to the problem of massive school failure. Please try to relate
each one of them with the concept of educability, previously worked with.
20
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
The modern conception of the development
And its repercussion in the rooms
In this paragraph we need to describe and submit to discussion the
representations over the development that ordered many part of the
modern practices of raising and education of the children. Solidarity
representations with the studies over evolutive psychology, with the
medical-psyquiatric practices and the evolutionist epistemology that
dominated the XIX century.
In this context, the development is perceived as a process of unique
course, ordered in a theological way and of homogeneous rhythms. This
is, all the subjects are expressed in a different level of a same process and
the evident differences among them or among populations are meant as
differences of level of development or as detours from their normal course.
Thus, is understood the same process of development as the progressive approach to
certain points of destination, valued and foreseen as normal (expected). Teleological,
then, is in the sense that its logic is ordered by the arrival of a telos, a final state of a
desired development. And, to this, we add a progress expectation according to certain
times that define, absolutely, detailed criteria of being normal.
Let’s observe some consequences of this naturalized perspective over the
development. In line with the school, pediatric and raising practices, present in the
modern times, there was an idea to actively produce a homogeneous development in
management and times, penalizing as abnormalities, the delays or detours, defining, for
example, the performances, levels and ways of educability. The equation, that is
important to acknowledge is the one that confuses the desirable development and
cultural and historically valued one with the normal or natural development.
Modernity and the school ideal expressed it in a clear way, valuing certain ways of
developing, those that promote the entrance to a good culture, to the ways of scientific
The
problem lies in observing such valuations in a naturalized way and dehistorical, and suppose that the development towards the appropriation of
so specific cultural practices
thinking, to the progress according to homogeneous and foreseen ways, etc.
21
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
as the writing or the science, express a natural development of the
subjects. Together with that, as we shall observe, the school is perceived
as the natural space for this appropriation to be produced. In such a way
that if some subjects do not show high availability or possibilities or
appropriation in the ways and in the foreseen times, its nature can be
suspected. The notion of delay is not explained, except under the
supposed thing of a normalized expectation of homogeneous rhythms
and almost natural in the processes of development of the subjects.
The latter leads not to recognize or simulate the political nature of the
education practices that promote some development courses over the
many possible ones. In such a way that, as Burman (1994) pointed out,
the evolutive psychology, alike in its origin to the same process of
modern schoolarization, results in a body of normative descriptions or
naturalized prescriptions. The school shall be designed and perceived as
an space that should harmonize with this naturalized development.
Please note that the progresses of the subjects, as Chapman (1988)
has well indicated, are assigned as a distance that is closer to the aim to
be reached, as progress in the sense or proper direction measured for
what is still pending to be followed. However, the development could
well be conceived as process of change, which progress is assessed by
the distance taken from the starting point, though the direction to be
taken shall be initially uncertain or, at least, not naturally prescribed. For
the teachers that read these lines, it shall be easy to recognize here the
usual difficult times that the assessment of processes of learning with
open ending, poses on us, with the arrival to aims or school
achievements already prescribed. Reaching the goals, let’s add, in the
times and the rhythms considered as normal.
Please also note that what has been described here, does not imply that
this perspective shall contemplate or assess the obvious differences of
every kind that may be carried out by the subjects. Either in the rhythms
and times of its development, as well as in the course that this same
process may undertake. The modern education practices, as we said, did
not ignore, at all, the differences of the subjects, but they meant them,
that is to say, they interpreted them, read them, produced them in some
way, as deficits, delays or detours, since the
22
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
criteria of development of unique course, teleological and of homogeneous rhythms
was perceived as the normal course of development.
In fact, as we shall try to show later one, the development in many
modern perspectives is perceived as a multidirectional process,
inherently diverse (Chapman, 1988; Valsiner, 1994; Cole, 1999). It is, at
the same time, an open and not known process. However, it does not
imply that this is about a process with no analyzed regularities or mainly
risky. To speak honestly, it is about a complex process, co-defined for its
"natural” aspects, those that define us as human babies with the
variations, as for social aspects, the cultural defined practices that
produce restrictions to the development, highlighting then, some guides
and paths, and some ways of psychological development. In such a way,
that the education practices in a wide sense, of the raising and the school ones, have to
be analyzed with care as a kind of practices of government, as producers of some
specific courses.
The good or bad new thing is that nothing indicates that there is
something like a “natural development”, that that seemed to have a path
beforehand, pursuant to the evolutive classic perspective. For this reason,
the education practices cannot be submitted as technical, neutral,
stimulating practices of a natural development, but as definitely political
practices.
In the same sense, we suggest to analyze the consequences of this bond, for our
looks over the subject that
learns and the school
practices.
2
3
23
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
The school education processes and the
constitution of the modern childhood
We have submitted that the perspective centered in the deficit had a
second supposed item of importance. Such supposed is referred to the
naturalization, already commented of the school space.
This sometimes mean, on one part, the perception of the fact that the
school space is a sort of natural space to produce developments and
learning in the subjects. On the other hand, it perceived the ways of
organization of the school work, the own logic of the school, as products
not historical, as if it is about contingent constructions, politically
decided. The modern school adopted precise and effective ways of
organization, not innocuous to the ends of producing, or collaborating in
the production of specific courses of development of the subjects, this
means, of specific ways of living childhood, of producing learning, etc.
We shall propose to briefly analyze these three questions. On one part,
the relation between school education processes and constitution of the
modern childhood. On the other hand, the features that we shall call the
hard components of the modern school device. Finally, some reflection
over the appropriate/inappropriate of the school format for the promotion
of learning.
As it is known, the processes of massive school education are considered as particularly
This is, in
modern times, some specific ways of living the childhood were
produced, idiosyncratic ways that were organized as from the raising,
pediatric and mainly school practices. The historical research clearly
showed that the modern ways of perceiving childhood, the feeling of the
childhood, were not “natural” forms, but specific historic products. This is
critical ones, collaborating in the production of the modern childhood.
called childhood to the specific way of processing childhood that is produced in modern
times. In
such a way, that the image of the children seems to be attributing
as their own nature, the features as dependency, need of protection,
heteronomy, and the need of a gradual access to the culture
24
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
or adult practices. If until the industrial revolution and previous to the
big migrations from the field to the city, children could be perceived as
fixed to the economic and family education device, sharing activities
and positions with the adults, now they are perceived as a necessary
segregation of the childhood culture. It was required for the children
that were around the streets and were not reached by the labor hiring, a
settlement to a device. Massive school education fixed a specific device
to the children that positioned them as students. As it was already
perceived, those features attributed to the childhood were precisely the
ones defined by the position of the student in the modern school space.
The student is located in a position of heteronomy, dependency,
and of gradual access to the adult knowledge, they are placed in the
position of child.
These historical questions are hand in hand with the revisions of the
psychology of development recently commented. This means, there is a
common highlighted denominator. The historical production of modern
childhood submits once again, its non natural nature.
Please state this again: The ways of perceiving and living the
childhood in the way of the childhood are historical productions that
say nothing about the “natural” development of the children. This is
to say, that modern evolutive conception that we have described, very
highly does not refer to a supposed natural child, but to this modern
child, this ideal way of living childhood pursuant to the perception of
modernity. As we have already seen, this normative ideal is
naturalized and expressed, and put into practice a normal criteria
with which it is judged, assessed, measured and compared to the
subjects. School shall result in the social laboratory of production of
normal childhood and the surface of emergency of the possibility of
analyzing the comparative way, precisely, to the childhood
population.
It is interesting to point out some of the features that the modern school
format undertakes and that can be aspects invisible or not think about at
the time of approaching a psico-educative analysis of the processes of
learning. In general, they are described as features of the processes of
25
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
school education and the own school modern format, as follows:
− The “universal” and compulsory inclusion
− The presence of a working regime and of regulation of spaces and
times, relatively homogeneous.
− progression
− Simultaneity (room and systemic)
− The creation of a collective of students
Let’s quickly review some of these features. On one part, something
usually forgotten, but that results crucial, mainly at the time of weighting
the encouragement of the students, is the fact that the school education is
proposed as a compulsory universal nature. Although it is understandable
that we think in its access as a critical right, of the children and the
young, we cannot forget that this is a duty and that the ways that we have
achieved to grant to the school organization have not always resulted
attractive not potentials of the full participation of the subjects. It only
needs to point out the fact of conceiving it as a duty that places us in the
strong commitment of answering with care the need to grant possibilities
and re-signify or even, reconstruct the school format.
Other features that need to be considered, in another dimension of the
problem, are those that regulate the way of organizing the learning of the
students. The modern school format has adopted detailed and specific
ways of regulating the times and the spaces to produce learning. The
case of the time is full of the institutional expectations before mentioned.
There is a detailed landmark of the times in scales so variable as the
years or school cycles, as in the times of execution of the tasks in the
classroom. However, two are the most critical aspects at the time of
defining the segmentation imposed by the modern school format over the
organization of the learning: Simultaneity and graduation.
The first one, the simultaneity makes reference to the usual organization
of the classes in which a teacher teaches in a simultaneous way to a
group of students. This organization has to be contrasted with other
possibilities as the ones of the monitoring or tutoring ways in which the
teacher teaches the students that are the monitors and re-transmit the
class to a group of students. Please remember that the simultaneous
format comes from the supposed of
26
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
the convenience, or at least the inconvenience is not shown, that the
students learn at the same time following the same activity in a
simultaneous way. This that has been described makes reference to what
is called simultaneity “of the room” and is usually complemented with a
“systemic” simultaneity, the one that points to a homogeneity in the
treatment of the learning at the level of the education system. Both
questions, as shall be understood, shall limit the possibilities of
designing education practices that follow the diversity of interests,
rhythms and styles of the students.
The graduation refers to many questions. First, the idea of the
organization of the learning groups by gradual and homogeneous levels
of the knowledge dominance. On the other hand, such groups of
students, are grouped by age. And, in a critical way, there are regimes of
promotion by which the students, now with relative independence of
their age, promote or nor the levels in accordance with showing a
satisfactory performance in all the areas of knowledge in a simultaneous
way. This means, the students shall be promoted, shall pass to another
level, as long as they have met a minimum of achievements in all the
areas. In such a way, the usual of a graduate regime is that if the students
only learn the contents in a partial way, the contents foreseen or even
when they have reached what is stated, it has been done in certain areas,
these have to repeat the level done. Please apologize that we described
with certain detail something so known, but the same difficulty of
describing it, speaks it about the level of naturality with which it is
perceived this way of organization of the learning. The description
sometimes illuminates other questions. It is something absurd that before
children that do not learn pursuant to this strategy that we have proposed,
our master resource is to make the repetition of same. Please note that
the expectation is tacitly placed in the mere passing of time, that is to
say, that the student “matures”, since nothing has varied in the offering
school format.
These two aspects mean something obvious but it is not redundant to
remember: In the school life, the learning steps are organized in a
collective way, this is, the strategies of learning that have to point to the
management of a population and not to the personalized attention, so
many times claimed for. It is not insinuated that it is not possible to
attend in the school format the different forms and rhythms of the
subjects and groups, but it is necessary to reflect over the fact
27
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
if these stiff components are really facilitators or obstacles for the
development of flexible strategies that are watchful of the diversity.
Finally, the question that we proposed to submit in the third term. That is to
question for the appropriatness/inappropriatness of the school format for
the promotion of learnings. We warned in the first place the mutual
nature that were taken by the processes of massive schooling and the
processes of modern childhood constitution with the special features. We
observed that very few elements were saved from the vision of childhood
development as a natural development, evidencing that this is about a
historical and culturally produced development. In a second term, we
saw then that it is necessary to follow the ways that were taken by the
modern school practices. Its perception as natural practices are destined
to potentiate a natural development in childhood that are at stake. We
note how the school format adopts very specific modes of processing
childhood and proposing conditions for the learning, as in the case of the
simultaneity and the graduation.
Finally, we want to briefly consider in this paragraph, the strategic
operation that encouraged the massive school education in the children.
This matter does not seem to be fully compatible with our idea of
highlighting the efficiency criteria in the achievement of the cognitive
objectives, many times with abstraction of the multiple effects that
school education possesses. Let’s observe in that sense, the quotation of
Anne Querrien, belonging to a classical study over the school processes
in France in the XIX century, precisely when it was questioned whether
it was convenient or not to adopt a simultaneous or mutual format of
monitors, for the organization of the teaching:
“According to Dubois-Bergeron, author of a document against the
mutual teaching, called ‘La verdad sobre la enseñanza mutua’, that
comes to light in 1821, (... ) ‘The major service to the society shall
possibly inaugurate a method that makes the instruction destined to the
lower and poor class most difficult and long ... It is necessary to occupy
the children as from 4 years to 12 years. Not allow them to form part of
this emptiness resulting from a formation of 20 months. The mutual
teaching is not approved, since it teaches to read, write and calculate in a
machine-like way”.
“...pursuant to the General Council of Calvados the mutual method has a
sense
28
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
For the children of the favored classes since it is destined to widen the
knowledge at the maximum and have, consequently, an interest in
learning as fast as possible, the instruments of indispensable basis. But,
precisely for that, this is a door that has not to be opened to the
popular classes” (Querrien, 1983: 76, italics in the original). As may
be observed, our contemporary concern is to achieve in a rapid form,
an appropriate dominance of the knowledge, the primacy of a logic of
that efficiency, that did not seem to have any debate. As we already
stated, the school education of the children followed an initial and
principal moralized and disciplinary objectives relatively subsidiary or
co-helpers of the moralized ends. In
a second term, it is important to
We make reference to “the politic” issue
highlight or at least ask oneself over in a sense that exceeds the idea of an
the fact if the final adoption of the education policy or the exercise of a
from a central body. In fact, the
simultaneous format shall not power
use given is related with the works of
achieved what was suggested by the Miche Foucault, where the political issue
referent to the multiple and capilar
author of this document. That is to isissues
of the exercise of the power,
say, that may be the objective has mainly in the modern institutions, among
been complied of having more them, the scholar ones. In such a way
that the pedagogical practices can be
difficult and long the education
conceived
as
practices
of
the
government:
“In
itself
the
exercise
of
the
of the children of popular sectors.
power is not a violence, sometimes
Perhaps they do not have educable hidden It is as setof actions over possible
essences damaged nor “deficitiary” actions, it operates over the field of
possibility or is registered in the
conditions of the beginning of the behaviour of the acting subjects. It
school life. Perhaps, simple and incites, induces, seduces, facilitates or
difficults … it is a way of acting over an
dramatically, the school format has acting subject, as long as they act or are
never been thought with the susceptible of acting. Actings, as long as
they act or are susceptible of acting. A
ingenuity with which it was set of actions over other actions. (Please
perceived, as a potential factor of the see Foucault, 1988:15)
development of the ones that precise
it the most, as an appropriate public
school, and opened to the reality of
our children, whatever it may be.
There are reasons to think of the
definition of the education school of
the subjects that is a frankly political
problem.
29
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
The school learning, its specificity and
its subjects.
In this second part, we try to describe some developments of the
psychology of the development and the education that may serve as tools
for the analysis of the problems opened in the first part. That is to say, to
try to organize part of the problem of the nature of development and the
relation that may be established among processes of the development and
education practices, in particular the scholar activities. For this task, we
will value some of the submissions within the cognitive perspectives and
the ones called Socio Cultural Approaches in psychology. In the first
place, there is going to be an approximation to the particularities of the
school learning from the point of view of the demand of the cognitive
work. Then, we shall consider some aspects of the proper learning
conception of the socio-cultural approaches, and finally, a necessary
reflection over the sense of the school experience.
The School learning
What are the demands and the challenges that the
school learning poses to the students?
Ángel Rivière, an outstanding Spanish psychology, wrote more than
twenty years ago a nice article called: Why do the children fail so little?
(Rivière, 1983). Obviously, attention was paid over the fact that it is
amazing that the children had difficulties when learning at school. In no
innocent way, as you will understand, it invited to invert the question and
reflect, truly, over the surprising fact that the children do not “fail” in the
habitual common sense, with more frequency. With irony, they posed the
existence of a series of implicit commandments that encouraged the
school logic.
30
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
As the ones in the Sinai Mount, the cognitive commandments are those
that the school implicitly imposes on the child. They are ten and can be
briefly solved in this kind of “table of the school law”, as follows:
I «You will disconnect great part of your thought from the human purposes or
intentions».
II «You shall have an intention attitude to learn».
III «You shall selectively devote your attention to the school tasks».
IV «You will try to control the selection and employment of your intellectual
resources and of the memory».
V «You shall have to develop, employ and compile strategies and specialized
abilities for the treatment of the information».
VI «You shall quickly dominate new ways and codes of representation».
VII «You shall have to organize and progressively de-contextualized many of the
concepts, systematized widening the semantic memory».
VIII «You shall employ the maximum of your resources of logic competence
and/or short term memory when the task demands and the professor».
IX «You shall have to assimilate the contents and generalize the schemes,
abilities and strategies, not only for the ones that have been explicitly taught, but
also for the other new ones» .
X «And, to cap it all, you shall need to appear to be a child that is interested and
competent». The ten main cognitive commandments with which you can summed
up all the rest, are the first and the tenth, with which the matter is like this:
As follo ws: « Yo u shall
Reading Suggestions
disco nnect g rea t pa rt of
your
thinking
to
the
purpo ses
a nd
human
If you are interested in studying more over
these issues, we suggest you to read Riviére,
intentio ns, and, in addition,
A., “¿Por que fracasan tan poco los niños?”,
you shall have to appear like an
in Cuadernos de Pedagogía, numbers 103
and 104, July-August 1983, Barcelona.
interested and competent child.”
(Rivière, 1983).
31
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
What Riviére has emphasized is a
posture against the construction of
knowledge in the school context
that reinforces, at least, to point
out two aspects. On one side, it is
pointed out that in the psychoeducation debate, it is defined as
discon tinu ity
h ypo th esis
between
the
cognitive
development in daily contexts and the produced in teaching contexts. In the
second term, the impossibility of understanding the school learnings making
abstractions of the experience and valuable components that order the
school experience. We shall briefly develop both aspects.
The Hypothesis of continuity between the daily
and school cognitive development
The hypothesis of discontinuity makes reference to the fact that in order to
understand the way in which a child learns at school cannot be enough , the
abstract features of the learning and the development, nor the ones that are
centered in the spontaneous or daily
development, but they shall have to pay attention
to the special demand of the cognitive work that
The school submits the children with the
the school imposes. Part of the work shall consist
performance of the activities that are
on the revision of the psychological processes
proposed therein, particular ways of
constructed in contexts of raising or non school
solving and a much more selective
ones, as from the speaking to the daily concepts.
attention than the one than the one
The school, as indicated by the “commandments”
usually shown by the child in other learning
situations, as in his games or
promotes
“spontaneous” explorations. That is to say
that it is expected that a boy in the
classroom may
32
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
very idiosyncratic and sophisticated ways
of cognitive work. From there, the
surprise of Riviere about the way in
which they rarely fail, truly speaking, the
children that are faced with a
counterintuitive contents, formed in the
history through the hard work of the
people, in particular genius, making a
conscious use of the symbolic resources,
and, if this is not enough, ¡All of that at
one school! That, besides, they ask us to
have the appearance of people
interested... We expect that the deepness
of this irony on the light of what was
passed over the idiosyncratic issue, and in
way, an arbitrary one, of the school
organization.
realizar un filtrado riguroso de la información
relevante
y de formas
de
resolución
convencionales, al menos considerada así
por la escuela y dejar por fuera todo aquello
que no lo sea, aún cuando dicha selección
no resulte igualmente significativa para el
propio niño.
Demandas cognitivas particulares, como la
demanda
atencional, son
consideradas,
repetidas veces, un “a priori” que el sujeto
debe portar. Con frecuencia olvidamos que
se trata de formas que los sujetos deben
construir, que pocas veces se enseñan y sin
embargo se exigen en las aulas.
Resultan además de indicadores que suelen
considerarse
frecuentemente
en
las
escuelas para describir preocupaciones en
torno a los alumnos, en especial en
relación
a
aquellos
que
muestran
dificultades para aprender o adaptarse a
las propuestas áulicas. Es de importancia
entonces, reparar en las características del
trabajo escolar y también en nuestras
afirmaciones cuando describimos a un
niño como “desatento” si acordamos en
considerar esto como un criterio útil para
explicar la falta de “éxito” en su desempeño
escolar.
33
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
To think among colleagues
We offer two brief situations in which three girls of 8 years old participate, with the aim of reflecting
over the cognitive efforts that was demanded by each one of these activities.
Situation 1
Laura, Mariana y Maite meet in Laura´s house to play. After watching and trying different toys
that Laura has in her room, they choose the game of the Oca. First, they got organized: Each of
them takes a colour and throws the die to see who was going to begin. After that, the game
began. In the developing of the activity, a problem arises: They know that some boxes have
obstacles that the players have to get through, but they cannot find the paper that explains that.
At the beginnig they try to remember, but there are too many obstacles to remember them with
precision, and this impedes the good course of the game, because they disagree in the forfeits
to be complied with. Somewhat discouraged, they think about many options but they do not
agree in none. Until Maite proposes to write together the necessary forfeits for the game. First,
they observed the table and copy the numbers of those boxes that should submit the obstacles.
After this, they shall interchange different possibilities, of which the final are selected. They
wrote respecting the order that delimits the path of the table, in such a way of having to be able
to locate them with more easiness. Finally, the three of them happy, are ready to play and keep
the written registration for other game opportunities.
Situation 2
Now, imagine that the same girls at school are solving the following problem of mathematics.
1.At the field of the father of Juan, they distributed the gifts for the laborers that worked
therein. All of them had to receive the same quantity. There were 25 gifts and 4 labourers.
How many gifts correspond to each of them? Were some gifts leave out?
2.Then, they distributed 25 chocolates for the same 4 labourers. How many chocolates
correspond to each of them? Were some chocolates leave out?
3.Did the labourers receive the same quantity of gifts and of chocolates? Why? To
respond to this question, please take into account the following suggestion of a 3º grade
student: “I believe that this it not, because chocolate cannot be parted and you receive half
or a quarter or a little part more for each of them”.
We propose to compare the two situations with some guiding questions: In each
situation, who selected the activity?
What kind of difficulties are presented to these girls in each ocassion?
Which are the instruments and necessary knowledges to solve each situation?,
In some of the scenes, do they need a more specific orientation?
What is common in both scenes? Whar are the different elements? Are these situations
posing similar cognitive demands to the girls?
34
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
Life and value elements that
provide order to the school
experience
The second aspect we find in Rivière´s concern is the one we talked
about, on the inability, then, to reduce the complexity of the school
experience to a not embodied cognitive experiment. The chances and
sense that order the cognitive constructions are filled with the
possibility of reviewing the first and the last mandate. This is, how to
make the school experience be able to imply us in the sophisticated
cognitive activity that makes it specific, but on the other hand, that it
can do this as a way to participate in an experience or human activity of
proper and appropriate senses. The last mandate harshly questions the
school thing: Shall it be possible that the school experience is truly
interesting? Would we able, students and teachers, as educators, not to
make the parody of an interest and shall we be able to genuinely involve
in a mutual experience of learning?
We have different sources to consider the specific nature of the school
learning processes. We have already seen something on the prospects
that emphasized the need to consider the school practices for the
purposes of power, and specially, the labeling practices, when the
school space is seen not as a history building but as a normal, neutral
and natural environment to produce learning (cf. Mehan,2001; Mc
Dermott, 2001; Skliar, 1999; Valsiner, 1996).
On the other hand, developments of the cognitive approaches
themselves, as the one pointed out by Rivière, have seen- specifically
and with subtlety- the culturally
specific character of the school SU G E R E N C I A S D E L E C T U R A
processes and the specificity and
roughness of the cognitive demand In appendix III you will find a brief note on
and domain of sophisticated the arbitrary and mandatory feature of the
semiotic tools that are proposed or school project and the need to consider
these typical features when thinking about
imposed. In the same way, they
the motivation and interest of students.
have focused on the particular type
of
35
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
knowledge production they present- as a purpose or differential
construction rules of knowing in the daily, school or scientific
environments- and in the relationship between the cognitive, motivation
and vital/situation processes (cf. Resnik, 1999; Rodrigo, 1994; Pozo,
2001; Rivière, 2000; Huertas, 1997). This is, on one hand, that the
school demand of cognitive work obliges to be recognized in all its
impact and to warn on its arbitrary or highly sophisticated character. On
the other hand, the demanded cognitive work must not be seen as a mere
not embodied and abstract cognitive process but as a part of full
participation of the person in specific cultural practices.
Demands of the cognitive work
Some of the notes that are distinctive of this cognitive demand, as we
saw, and typical of the school environment, are descontextualization and
artificiality. Both terms have been misunderstood or with different
interpretations. The descontextualized character of school learning
reminds, actually, of the fact of the school generating an idiosyncratic
space of work where the same representation tools are examined
specifically. Descontextualizing in such sense means subtracting a
semiotic tool of its initial or usual use contexts and re-contextualizing it
in other as particular as the school, where it is temathized, questioned,
turned from tool into object of the knowledge activity. It is the case of
the language analysis promoted by school learning. Grammatical
analysis, for instance, presumes of having stopped the ordinary
relationships or pragmatic effects of a statement, being able to analyze it
in linguistic terms, as a “sentence”.
The “descontextualized” term in education, qualifying learning or
teaching practice, is used actually critically, pointing out that learning in
question "lacks context" at the moment of being transmitted. Although
concern shown by this statement can be understood, it usually is stated
from an alleged opinionated thing
36
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
and it is the apparent paradox where we are, due to a position that
insists on that school learning, that is the school itself, would have to
hide or eliminate its specific features being similar to extra-curricular
practices, rather than having to adapt or be related more to the everyday
things of students, where the learning would become significant –as
Rivière stated-. This is closely related to the second aspect stated as
typical of school: artificiality. Such warnings although are considered
when designing efficient and attractive teaching strategies, seem not to
acknowledge that the differentiated existence of a training place such as
school, claims certain specific features for regulation of its practices.
Otherwise, its existence would not be justified.
As we already stated, “artificiality” is considered as a particular feature
of school learning. As in the case of descontextualization, it is good to
differentiate, on one hand, critics to certain educative practices that do
not consider possible or necessary connection of learning to extracurricular activities, and on the other hand, the intent to generate a kind
of "natural" environment -that is, not artificial- to learn. For all the
above, the school education practices are not natural in the sense that
they are not cultural practices that are historically and politically
defined, promoting certain subjective development methods. In this
sense, they are inevitably “artificial” since they do not form “natural”
environments to learn. The term is not suitable, but what matters here is
to see that, after our wish to
generate
teaching
practices
specially considering the prior
knowledge of the students, the
fluid relationships with extracurricular practices, etc., we must
notice that they will always be
specific cultural practices that
cause a separation from the
everyday development.
We
should review our
natural
harmony expectation between the
development of individuals and
37
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
Opening questions and
deepening on the subject
A scene illustrates one of the ideas developed in
this paragraph A scene illustrates one of the
ideas developed in this paragraph
“We are in front of an English class of a
2º grade. The teacher hangs in the blackboard
a picture in which an apple on a table can be
observed, and asked the group, Where is the
apple? Waiting all of them to answer
her question.
Is this a genuine question? That is to say,
Is there something that the teacher does
not know and why she is in the need to ask
this question?
Perhaps this situation is oriented for the
purpose of using an idiomatic structure and
the goal of the teacher is to confirm the
acquisition of same on behalf of the children.
This could be a good example, highlighted by
a critical look of the sense that is sometimes
attributed to the term “decontextualized” in
education, in this case making reference to
the language, that should lose the
communicative sense to be treated in
grammatical terms. It is also an illustration of
the condition of artificiality that many school
activities carry out.
However, it is good to notice that this
example does not validate at all the fact that
to teach a language, as any other content at
school, we are in the need to prepare
situations in which the instruments and
objects are extracted from their context of
initial or habitual use, in ways of promoting
38
the school method to produce knowledge.
The school environment is inevitably a
place that promotes idiosyncratic
development and learning manners
that pose separations from the
everyday things of students, and
proposes work rules that are different
from the other extra-curricular
practices. That is, the school
environment is a culturally produced
place with those specific purposes.
In terms of all the above we are now in
conditions to state that school practices
pose people the need to answer to a high
demand of cognitive work, and this
implies recognizing also, that some
psychological functions are developed
participating in learning situations that are
offered by the school itself.
These
statements are clearly placed in the sociocultural approaches, and mostly in the
original Vigotskian work, in which
scholarization allowed building advanced
superior psychological processes. This is,
of those psychological processes that are
product of the cultural development but
that only occur due to participation in
school practices. These processes
demand, certainly, higher aware and
willing control by the person and propose
an increasingly descontextualized use of
semiotic tools. These revisions, to be
explained in detail in the next chapter,
bring a new sense to the above statements
on descontextualization
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
in terms of particular features of the school
the analysis and the learning, that is
to say, to re-contextualize them in
learning. The descontextualized use of tools,
the frame of a pedagogical situation.
as seen above, is understood as inherent and
At the same time, this example
invites us to take into account in this
suitable, since it involves the possibility of
particular use of the objects, and
analyzing cultural objects differently and
instruments when teaching, and thus
exert come care and control in a way
therefore promoting new processes of the
that we can avoid the lack of sense
person. This is the case of language, for
and the lose of interest of the
student for the school proposals.
example, when it is subtracted from its use
everyday situations to be recontextualized in
the new practices environment. Such use of
the language consists of, among others, abstraction of certain aspects, such
as the classic example of writing in connection to speech, where the
particular cognitive demand is about the need to abstract the speaker and to
be located in imaginary communication situations.
A change of perspective: switching the focus on the
individual to the situation
We have talked about questions related to
school learning and its specificity. We
mentioned different ways to conceive
learning and “non-learning” in school.
Can we now think and obtain other ways
to analyze and understand the knowledge
situations in the classrooms?
We said before that, actually, the
problem of the ability to educate is solved,
finally, in the theoretical perspective
sustained on the explanation of human
development. The classic perspective,
contemporary thoughts of deficit that
A more updated description of these
processes, specifically promoted by the
school learning, was offered by Ángel
Riviére when featuring the development of
the roles Type 4. Those that were
considered similar to the advanced
processes
of
Vigotsky.
In
his
characterization, he pointed out that they
were only formed by an intentional action
and demanded a very high conscious and
willing control of the subject, as well as
dominance of the symbolic specialized
systems (For a broadening of the
taxonomy of roles of Riviere cf Riviere,
2003, for a comparison with the taxonomy
of Vigotsky, cf. Baquero, 2001).
39
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
we have analyzed, considered the
individual as a privileged analysis unit.
The individual seemed as a selfexplanatory unit of development, with
essences and attributes that allowed him
to predict and explain his behaviors.
Paul Pintrich (Pintrich, 1994) stated,
several years ago, that, with growth of
socio
cultural
approaches
of
development, which had a relative
breaking point in Vogtsky works, there
had been a deep change of metaphors in explanation of development and in
understanding the place of education practices. Part of this new metaphor game
was due to a substantial change in analysis
units that moved the perspective of the
Una discusión central en el campo de la psiindividual to the situation in which he was
cología del desarrollo lo constituye el de la
definición de adecuadas unidades de análisis
involved. This situation explains his own
al intentar explicar -o intervenir- sobre los
being as a person and his particular position in
pro c es o s de des arro llo / apren dizaje
a socially defined relations system.
(Castorina y Baquero, 2005). Un modelo de
unidades se opone, en principio, a otros centrados en análisis de elementos yuxtapuestos.
Esto es, la definición de una unidad intenta
atrapar un sistema que consideramos posee
reglas de juego propias irreductibles a sus
elementos. Si bien este parece ser un lugar
común de los modelos estructurales o sistémicos, fácil de comprender, no resulta sencilla
la tarea de definir una adecuada unidad de
análisis a la hora de explicar un fenómeno o
intervenir sobre él. Hemos ya desarrollado el
ejemplo de los abordajes usuales del fracaso
escolar masivo y el tratamiento habitual al
problema de la educabilidad.
40
The different socio-cultural approaches
relatively coincide regarding the need to
consider, at least, certain unavoidable
elements to be able to understand the
constitution and subjective development
processes. In this way, we could say that, in
line with part of the Vigotskian developments,
the intersubjective activity semiotically
mediated appears as the core of the
development explanation. That is, according
to the socio-cultural approaches the building
of a human person
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
cannot be posed on the basis of the human
dog participation in social situations, in
connection to others mediated by
language.
This mutual appropriation
process of the individual and culture are
the ones that will cause a person with his
singularity. In this sense, although it
seems hard to suspect for the classic
perspective that is so rooted in our
common sense, the intersubjective activity
is the first one and it explains the
possibility of constitution of a person.
Said in other words, the intersubjective
activity semiotically mediated is a genetic
precursor of subjective functioning.
The complexity to be seen in this
perspective is the non reducible tension of
social and subjective processes in the
psychological functioning. This means
that the subjective processes and the
learning itself, cannot be explained
outside the intersubjective activity
semiotically mediated that originated it.
The interiorization process, that is, the
internal reconstruction of intersubjective
psychological operations, are idiosyncratic
processes typical of the person, which
cannot be explained outside the situations
where he participates. They are boundary
processes, that put in hard place the not
suitable formulation of analysis units
READING
SUGGESTIONS
At this point, it is useful that if you have not
had the opportunity of approaching the sociocultural statements around the constitution of
the subject, please see some of your classic
texts. This shall allow you to easily understand
the ideas that follow.
For an introduction to the socio-cultural
approaches, mainly its Vigotskiana root can be
consulted.
Riviere, A. (1988) La psicología de Vigotski,
Madrid. Aprendizaje Visor.
Vigotsky, L. (1988) El desarrollo de los
procesos psicológicos superiores, México,
Crítica, Grijalbo.
Wertsch, J. (1988) Vygotsky y la formación
social de la mente, Barcelona: Paidós.
For a relation of the Socio Cultural Approaches
with the education, the following can be read:
Daniels, H. (2003) Vygotsky y la pedagogía.
Barcelona: Paidós
Baquero R. (1966) Vigotsky y el aprendizaje
escolar, Bs. As., Aique (Edition in Portuguese:
Vytostky e a apredizagem escolar, Porto
Alegre, Artes Médicas, 1997).
Please remember that later on these
developments shall be widened and
broadened when referring to the approaches
of Bárbara Rogoff and the metaphor of the
appropriation.
as the classic question of the individual as
a center of looks and explanations. Actually, this question reminds of a deep
philosophic criticism to modern concept of the person, and, in the area of
psychological explanation
41
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
an overcoming of philosophy of the split that dichotomizes the individual and
social, natural and cultural, external and internal areas, generating huge
difficulties to understand development. (Castorina and Baquero, 2005).
Note that what we are exposing is essential when explaining and participating
in development and learning processes, mostly those situated in school
environment. If the individual is our privileged analysis unit, all our
participations are limited on one hand to: diagnosing the status of his
“trainable essence”, the measurement of his skills, his “degree” of
development according to the already seen evolutive conception, etc. On the
other hand, offering "stimulation" or suitable external conditions so that his
"essence" can be developed or his alleged deficits can be compensated“ As
we have pointed out before, these positions consider the social conditions
pertinent to the development or learning problem, and they are considered as
external aspects, influencing on a process considered as typical of the
individual and his psyches.
Instead, when the situation is in the center of the scene, as the axis of reading
and analysis, and those metaphors remarking the inability to split the person
and his environment are used again, it is understood that the development
and learning processes are social and individual processes at the same
time. And the possibilities of development or learning of a person are only
explicable by the nature of his intersubjective links where he participates and
the type and way of use of the semiotic tools placed on that situation.
To broaden this text
Once agan, it is conveniet to reflect
over
the
classic
conception
of
development and those actions that
are derived of sustaining the person
as a privileged unit of analysis. In the
appendix V you shall find a news
article that introduces a critical debate
over the diagnoses and treatments
that are proposed for some children
of 2 and 3 years.
42
In this way, school, with its particular ways
of social relations, asymmetric interactions,
test practices and classification of students,
use of specific and sophisticated symbolic
tools –such as writing or the mathematical
grade systems- does not constitute an
external condition of the learning processes
of an individual. It is a cultural practice, an
intersubjective activity which is capable or
not of producing
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
development
in
people
participating therein. The ability
to educate here, if understood,
is no longer a personal attribute
and, although it is strange, it
seems more accurate to see it as
a property of educational
situations. Situations that are
capable or not of producing
development, considering the
singular characteristics of people.
Although the example is risky and relatively ordinary, is didactic. A
blind person prior to Braille invention was naturally considered as
unable to be educated for the purposes of his access to writing. When
other people of the community generated an alternative semiotic tool
not privileging the visual support, such as Braille, the person, curiously,
became able to be educated in those situations that have it, use it
properly and allow access to him. Nothing has changed in nature, in
biological nature if you like, of the blind person, but his social nature,
his subjective perspective, his possibilities to participate in cultural
practices that seemed to him, remember, naturally, forbidden to him,
have all changed. His individual attributes have not varied, but the
situation properties have, and the situation allowed the development.
There is no intention to pathetically conclude on the need to invent
Braille for poverty! But it is necessary to reach a valid conclusion: the
explanation of non-learning that places poverty as an essential property
of people, as an alleged deficit of individuals, is suspicious, as if a
“deficit condition” could be delimited outside the map, for political
purposes, that traces the educational environment with conditions
considered as normal or “ordinary”.
43
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
Participation and appropriation: two key concepts
to understand how we learn at school
We go on with the challenge opened by socio cultural perspectives while
new looks to reflect on learning and the ways in which we relate with school
knowledge. Let’s widen our analysis of the school situation where the
educative person is involved. When searching for mechanisms that explain
how the development and learning happen in such situations, the
contemporary approaches search for metaphor or the most suitable concept.
For some reason, Bárbara Rogoff has stated the limitations or risky
connotations of several of the most used terms or concepts, in the light of
what we have already discussed. She proposes to think alternative ways to
the metaphors of acquisition and internalization. She says that both cannot
entirely overcome a dichotomy approach between person and situation,
between the external and internal area.
The usual metaphor of development as “acquisition” of knowledge, practice,
etc. - more common in classic “constructive” positions or Piaget inspired- is,
according to her, of exaggerated emphasis in the activity of people, as if
learning or development could almost abstract particular situations that drive
or encourage it. The situation would operate as a kind of external
condition. In the case of “interiorization” metaphor –more frequent in
cognitive models, and specially, as we saw, in the Vigotskian views- the
contrary happens. Risk here would be in promoting a perspective that
considered development as a process of transfer of knowledge packages preelaborated by culture. What would be usual in both positions is a dichotomy
questioning between the individual and the social, the internal and the
external, but privileging the emphasis in different aspects. It is worth
clarifying that probably in Piaget and Vigotskian works and mostly in their
subtle developments on interaction aspects of their explicative models, this
question is, either solved, or problematized. But Rogoff observation is
pertinent, mostly, due to re-signification and common uses of theoretical
models, beyond the original work and discussion on its interpretation.
44
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
As it is known, Rogoff states she finds the appropriation metaphor
more suitable. People are developed and learn because they participate
in cultural practices where there is a process of reciprocal, although not
necessarily symmetric, appropriation between person and culture. This
process, at the same time is of subjective and social nature. Now, the
participation metaphor must be understood in its complexity.
Participating does not mean just “taking part” in a situation or event, in
the common sense we refer to when talking about “more or less
participative” people. Participating here means something more
fundamental, participating is conceived as being part of the situation.
This allows understanding, how in the case of our blind person- who
has access to a situation and activity where Braille and its use are part of
its elements- being part of the situation caused in him a significant
change in his way of participating in it, and in the community of readers
and writers.
Development and learning of people can be understood as variations in
ways of understanding and participation in situations where these people
are involved. Development is considered as an access to ways of
understanding and to different and new participation ways.
Of course, each community, each social activity, including educative
and school ones, causes specific ways of participation and allows or
disables access to different positions. That is why these somewhat
paradox effects of school practices can be stated, which claim to pursue,
many times, goals related to growing increase of autonomy of people, to
development of flexible and creative work strategies, and however, as
we saw, a format of child activity persists, that is, systematic distrust in
possibility of independent learning. Indeed, a format that does not
respect at all the different rhythms, modalities or interests of people or
groups. Something that seems to have the unpredicted simultaneous
and graduated format as pointed out before.
It is worth reviewing some features of learning and development that were
45
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
described from perspectives alike to the one of Rogoff. Let’s see some comparative
features between the conception of learning that is more typical of classic
cognitive approaches and the new look that could be proposed by situation
type approaches. We will see again a comparison chart belonging to other work
(Baquero, 2003).
Learning in classic cognitive and socio-cultural approaches:
Compared features
Classic cognitive approaches
Situated practice approach
Learning:
Learning:
1.
It is a mental phenomenon
1. involves both mental and body
processes It is focused on action
2. it is a mainly individual process
2. learning, like knowledge, happens in the
core of intersubjective functioning It is
distributed among people
3. the context is understood as a
stable
“recipient”
of
individual
processes
3. the context has inherence and belonging
connection to the person. person and
situation are a unity
4. it is a relatively homogeneous process
(it only varies in number or capacity of
the people)
4. It is a radically heterogeneous process,
multiple and diverse in production of
knowledge and meanings
5. knowledge appears as a stable
knowledge body
5.knowledge
is
changeable,
unstable,
produced by cultural activity that produces it
and gives it meaning
stable
stable
6.learning is understood as changes in ways
of understanding and participation of people
in a joint activity
7. There is an unidimensioning of
learning: it is understood as a mainly
cognitive change process
7.it must be understood as a multidimensional
process of cultural appropriation: it is an
experience involving affection, thought, action
that cannot be split
8. it can be seen as a differentiated
activity and of predictable products
8. learning is a natural element of cultural
activities and their products, although they
are not at random they are not predictable –
and it is not desirable-
6. learning consists of
acquisition or transfer
knowledge bodies
46
the
of
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
As we said before (cf. Baquero, 2003) “opposition is established
between a vision- introduced somewhat schematically- of learning as a
process of last resource- or basically- individual, mental process that
addresses the acquisition or internalization of a stable knowledge body
and where learning is understood, in turn, as a basically identical
activity in people –but for degree, rhythm and capacity questions- and
described as a process of cognitive end- that is: basically or only
cognitive. The situated vision (… ) moves the focus to the activity in its
whole, to the situation, where the person is involved" (Baquero, 2003).
It is worth noticing some other features that are emphasized then.
Describing the notes differentiating positively a situational conception,
we note that, first, it exceeds the mental area, facing a unit that
considers body and its situation. Learning then is not in the lonely
cognitive activity of the mind, but, in all cases, in participation in
psychological activities, thinking activities, trouble solutions, etc.,
distributed in collective life and where, as we saw, variable participation
ways are taken.
Another feature of extreme importance is the fact that the development
and the learning is measured, as heterogeneous and variable processes,
that is to say, inherently diverse. The switching of the focus of the
analysis of the person to the situation that poses a problem that was
already existing, truly speaking, in the classic conception centered on
the person. We already had problems to assimilate the diverse rhythms,
styles, previous knowledge, etc. that the subjects carried out and that
seemed to be not very collectable due to the school format, highly
homogeneous. The differences could be assimilated or meant, as we
already seen, as detours or deficits of the subjects in relation to the
normal expectations of development. However, when the focus is
switched from the person to the situation, the measurement of the
rhythms and directions of the development, of achievements or not
achievements on the access to the many practices that cannot make an
abstraction of the situational properties. It is not that there are no
possible and desirable goals to achieve in the development. On the
contrary, what is needed to indicate is that these cannot be already
imitated as goals or final stadiums of one
47
In 1949, Clément Mathieu, unemployed music
professor, began to work as a police office in an
Boarding School of re-education of minors.
Specially repressive, the education system of
the director Rachin was barely able to sustain
any authority over these difficult children. The
same Mathieu felt an intimate rebelliousness
before the methods of Rachin and a mixture
of confusion and compassion for the children.
In
the
efforts
to
approach
them,
he
discoveres that the music powerful attracts
kind of natural process of development
included in the essence of the subjects.
These are the different cultural practices
that are prepared in more or less
deliberate ways, about the expectations,
conditions and goals. In such a way, that
it is not object able that the school poses
valuations and expectations, but to
measure the fact that on producing
effects of important power, cannot be
hidden, naturalized or removed from a
watchful observance on the part of the
community. Expectations, criteria’s of
inclusion/exclusion, etc. that claim, then,
a careful revision of the same and some
form of political practice that allows the
subjects to co-define the nature of this
space. Mainly when trying to define the
nature of a p u b lic common space of the
school.
the interst of the students.
Escuela de rock
Directed by: Richard
Linklater
With: Jack Black , Mike
White, Joan Cusack
Dewey Finn es un rockero que ha sido despedido de su grupo de rock y necesita dinero para pagar el alquiler de su departamento. Dewey contesta una llamada telefónica
para Ned, su compañero de habitación, e
impulsivamente acepta un puesto como
maestro en una prestigiosa escuela primaria. Pero a pesar de que él no tiene idea de
cómo enseñar, cuando accidentalmente los
escucha tocando en la clase de música, decide convertir a sus estudiantes en una banda
de rock de alto voltaje.
48
On the contrary, it seems cynical or, at
least paradoxical or curious, that is
attached to the characteristics of the
subjects, their communities or extraschool practices, and even their
languages, as the causes of one of the no
happy inclusion. All indicates that we
need to understand the tried crises of the
school in its deepest sense. It is evident that
our efforts of improvement of quality are yet in
the tightest terms of an improvement on the
education achievements or of learning that are
currently frustrated or not fully
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
satisfied. On the other hand, our old pansophic ideal of teaching all to
everybody, that should carry out an inclusion with equity, appears to be
new and recurrently as an emergency problem of our agendas.
We should seriously ask if the apparent impossibility of learning on our
part of our students or of permanence at the school, appropriating in a
significant way of the knowledge herein processed. It shall not possess a
more dramatic bottleneck. Something that may exceed the explanation
on the way of mere deficitary conditions and places the problem of the
need of thinking on the school format itself. But not only in the criteria
of curricular and school organization, as we said before, but, even in
what is related to the deepest sense of the education experience. If
what was described is true and results to be truthful, and we believe that
the education experience has become in the modern school or the one
that we have inherited from it, a luck of parody experience in which the
subjects do not habitually constitute genuine bonds, in which we have
described what is true and shall result as real, and we believe is the
truth, the education experience has become into the modern school or
what was inherited from it, a sort of experience where the subjects do
not currently constitute genuine bonds, where the search of potentiating
the human experience of knowing and allowing the children and the
young to have access to emancipating ways of life and thinking, does
not order us. It seems that our fears are reduces to what is not estimated,
but it is the tight objective of
improving the achievements.
However, the suspicion lies in
these shall never be produced if
we can be able to recover,
capture or collaborating to
produce new senses for the
school experience, if we do not
sustain other readings over
education learning and failure.
4
9
49
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
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and Dilemmas in Views of Culture and Space”, Harvard Educational
Review; Summer 2003; 73, 2; Research Library Core pg. 164
• Baquero, R. (2001) “La educabilidad bajo sospecha”. Cuaderno de
Pedagogía Rosario Año IV Nº 9, 71-85.
• Baquero, R. (2002) “Del experimento escolar a la experiencia
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50
PEOPLE AND LEARNING
• López, N. (2004) “Educación y equidad. Algunos aportes desde la
noción de educabilidad”, Unesco- IIPE - Buenos Aires.
• López, N. y Tedesco, J. C. (2002) “Las condiciones de educabilidad de
los niños y adolescentes en América Latina. Documento para discusión.
Versión preliminar.” IIPE-UNESCO, Buenos Aires.
• Lus, María Angélica (1995) De la integración escolar a la escuela
integradora, Buenos Aires: Paidós
• Neufeld, M. R. y Thisted, J. A. (2004) “Vino viejo en odres nuevos:
acerca de la educabilidad y la resiliencia” en Cuadernos de Antropología
Social, pp. 83-99, Nro. 19, 2004, Buenos Aires, Instituto de Ciencias
Antropológicas, UBA.
• Pintrich, P. (1994) Continuities and discontinuities: future directions
for research in Educational psychology. Educational Psichology 29 137148.
• Querrien, A. (1983), Trabajos elementales sobre la escuela primaria,
Madrid, La Piqueta.
• Rivière, A. (1983) “¿Por qué fracasan tan poco los niños?” Cuadernos
de pedagogía, 103/104, Julio-Agosto.
• Rogoff, B. (1994) “Developing Understanding of the Idea of
Communities of Learners, Mind, Culture and Activity, Vol 1, N°4, 209229.
• Rogoff, B. (1997) “Los tres planos de la actividad sociocultural:
apropiación participativa, participación guiada y aprendizaje” en
Wertsch, J.; del Río, P. y Alvarez, A. (Eds.) La mente
sociocultural. Aproximaciones teóricas y aplicadas, Madrid:
Fundación Infancia y Aprendizaje
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• Valsiner, J. (1994) “Irreversibility of Time and the Construction of
Historical Developmental Psychology”. Mind, Culture and Activity, Vol. I,
Nº 1-2: 25-42.
• VVAA (2004) “Foro de educación: Educabilidad en tiempos de crisis.
Condiciones sociales y pedagógicas para el aprendizaje escolar”, en
Novedades educativas, pp. 18-31, Nro. 168, Nov. 2004, Buenos Aires.,
Ediciones Novedades Educativas.
• Wertsch, James (1993) Voces de la mente. Un enfoque socio-cultural
para el estudio de la acción mediada, Madrid: Visor. (original Voices of
the M ind. T he so ci ocult ural a pproach to med iat ed act ion,
Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1991).
• Wertsch, James (1998) La mente en acción, Buenos Aires, Aique.
52
EOPLE AND LEARNING
APPENDIX I
We herein submit to analyze the school report corresponding to a school of
primary level. It is a series of items with pre-established options that are
completed at the time of assessing each one of the students.
Attention


Constant
Fluctuant


Disperse


Deviated
Not atentive


Motivated


Reproducer

Difficulty in
understanding and
compliance


Ordered expression


Worried
Null
Imagination


Normal
Poor
Abindant
Fabulation
Response to the structions


Immediate
Mediate
Oral Languaje



No difficulties
Poor vocabulary
confused
Childish for his age


Wrong


Difficulties for the
pronunciation
Disordered expression
Behaviors of
surrounding
Attitude of the child before the failures


Indifferent
Does not get
discouraged

Try to overcome with
no success
Wealth
He gets inward
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HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
Mode of the character



Normal
Depressed
Exited






Unstable
Shy
Fearful
Emotional
Aggressive
Stubborn
Participation of the parents in the path of their child al school


Concurren voluntaremente
Concurren
Poor

Sí

No
In when attending, you are asked this suggestion, would you be indifferent to it?
Are you objetive
Do you try to protect your son?



Sí
Sí
Sí



No
No
No
What is being assessed by the items? Do this make reference to the objects
and objectives of the school learning and the teaching?
What is the conception of learning and development that lies by them?
Please observe in detail the items “imagination” and “mode of character”.
What is the desired student and boy that is described with these school
instruments?
How should you link these items to the concept of education and to the
deficit perspectives?54
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PEOPLE AND LEARNING
APPENDIX II
Two school experiences in which organization and the structure of the
formative space and time of the children and the young has
modifications in comparison with the formats of the universal school. As
an example, we offer to analyze with other colleagues, two brief
synthesis of education experiences that looked for alternatives to revert
the high indexes of “school failure”, pointing to a major inclusion of the
students, and to the promotion of better conditions for their development
and formation.
Not graduated Schools
The schools with the experience of no graduation arise in the province of
Buenos Aires in the years 1979-1980, as an alternative to give an answer
to different education problems. Among them, mainly, the repetition of
students belonging, most of all, to popular sectors. This situation gave
way to a pronounced divertion in the relation of chronologic age, done
grade and derived, in many cases, in the school abandonment.
The Program of Not Graduated Schools (PNG) appears as a institutional
pedagogic proposal to revert the school failure, trying to avoid
abandonment and improving, thus, the education quality.
In this frame, the elimination of a school organization in the traditional
grades is considered, and in its place, a new structure is proposed, by
levels according to the times of learning of the students.
Currently, the Non Graduated Program involves 40 schools. The
assessment of the experience is positive, pursuant to evidences of major
retention of the students in spite of the seriousness of the economic
conditions of the population.
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HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
Features of the no graduation:
Different institutional organization:
− There are no grades
− The children are grouped in three cycles or blocks, in relation to the
profiles and the expectations of achievements in the different areas of the
school knowledge.
− Promotion: Understood as the accreditation of achievements, possible
in any area of knowledge and at any time of the year.
− It means a re-formulation of the didactic proposal, of the curricular
design and the supposed theoretical and ideologists that guide the
learning practices.
− Normative: The staying time at a non graduated school cannot be less
than the one set forth for other schools at the primary level.
− The structural aspects have their own way in each education premise,
in relation to their own style of action.
The Non Graduated Program (PNG) uses an only one book or Report of
Achievements by cycle destined to consignate the evolution of the
learning of the children. The individual achievements are registered in
the frame of a “scale of surpass” that assesses the content of the areas
and the attitudes in general. Cycle 1º and 2º comprise each one of the 8
levels. The student shall be assessed in virtue of his achievement when
he reaches 60% of the attendance, and shall enter the level or cycle
immediately higher at any time of the year, pursuant to its advances. In
the cases of transferences to Graduated Schools, this document is
attached with an analytical report to have the inclusion in the system
considered.
The PNG has generated a new role of the teacher: “the leveler
teacher”, whose task is to potentiate the production of teachers and
students to avoid the school failure. Is the one who guides the teachers
over the curricular and media adequations with the families, centers and
institutions of the community.
To sum up, the non graduated experience, as a structural innovative form
aims to widen the possibilities of appropriation of school knowledge to
the different social sectors, in particular, those that are the most
disadvantageous ones. Thus, it aims to avoid the exclusion of the sectors.
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PEOPLE AND LEARNING
The marginal sectors, approaching a new concept of education institution
for all.
Plural School Red Municipal de Enseñanza/
Belo Horizonte – MG.
The red municipal of Belo Horizonte has been inserted in the movement of
pedagogical renewal initiated in Brazil, at the end of the decade of the
´70. In this frame, the schools generated significant and innovative
experiences in the strategies related to a new order of the time of setting of
the rooms, of reorganization of shifts (intermediary groups, groups of
complete shift); in the strategies of continuity and of promotion, of
increase in the type of classes, of diversification of areas / activities, and
of assessment processes.
Many of the changes mentioned are seen as “transgressions” of the
institutional order in force, but survive for the need of guaranteeing the
permanence of the girls and boys in an education experience. The idea is
that the time at school is a wealthy experience for the boys and girls as
socio-cultural subjects.
What the professionals, parents and students of the Net wait for is to, as
from the renewed practices of the school, to collectively construct a
political-pedagogical proposal as a whole and to that this proposal is
undertaken by the Municipal Government. Among the core axis that
guide this construction, we have to highlight, namely:
1) A more radical collective intervention before the high indices of
avoidance, above and, of reproval. The popular sectors cannot have a
formation experience with no interruptions, repetitions and
disadjustments between age and grade. The proposal of the Plural School
is to intervene in the excluding structures of the school system, and in the
culture that legitimizes those selective structures to collectively construct
a new school order, a basic education, more democratic and igualitarian
than the current one.
2) Sensitivity with the whole of the Human Formation. The Plural School
aims to see the disorder existing between the school and the social
movement. If we consider that the current social movement points out
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HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
The right of all to the full performance, as socio-cultural subjects, the
schools are redefined as spaces and times of living of such rights. Work
experiences are proposed that exceed the limits of the curricular
contents, of interdisciplinary nature and with all the common themes.
3) The school as a time of cultural experience. One of the basic
objectives is to recover the school as a public space that allows the
collective experience, the recreation and the expression of the culture.
4) The school as an experience of collective production. It is in the frame
of a collective formation, that the professionals and the students are
stated as plural subjects. In this line, and in opposition to the individual
education, practices are sustained that are creating a new style and a new
culture of collective construction of the daily life of the school. This
means, for example, the debate, preparation and approval shared of the
political-pedagogical projects, the workshops, the study groups, hours of
the project, among others.
The proposal is that the curriculum, is possible to be constructed as from
the collective definition of those contents that represent the current social
problems, and that these are worked as transversal subjects in the frame
of the different curricular subjects. A new way of understanding the
school content.
5) The experience of each age of formation with no interruption. The
child and the adolescent have to be acknowledged, currently, as subjects
of rights. The school cannot be thought only as the time of preparation
for the experience of adult rights in the future.
6) Appropriate socialization at each age-cycle of formation. It is expected
that the whole School Net (Red Escolar) knows that the time of school
should be a time of socialization-formation in the living together
between subjects of the same age-cycle of formation. Break-ups or
interruptions of this process are not justified by differences of race, class,
genre, rhythm of learning, etc.
6) New identity of the school, new identity of your professional.
Constructing the new Escuela Plural (Plural school), a new professional
is being constructed, more plural, more polytechnic. The fights for the
remunerated time of studies and research, the projects of and the
collective production, are the
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PEOPLE AND LEARNING
Most concrete experience of the new conscience of the professionals of
the Red Municipal over its right to the permanent formation at work.
Comments over the Plural School
Understanding education as a right, in the project of the Plural School,
there is no way of assessing to classify, excluding or sentencing,
approve or disapprove. It is assessed at the beginning, during and at the
end of the process to identify knowledge, values, and attitudes of the
students, to perceive the level of advance in relation to the objectives,
re-orientation and improvement of the pedagogical intervention,
identification of their final results of the learning-socialization process
and define the objectives for new learnings. In the process of assessment
of the process of learning-teaching in each cycle of formation, the
process of observation has to be accompanied by a careful registry, in
which the observations are written, as from defined criteria and
proposed objectives.
As from 1995, the Plural School proposes to organize the cycles in the following way:
CYCLES
STAGE OF
DEVELOPMENT
AGES OF FORMATION
GROUPING OF GRADES
First
Childhood
6, 7 e 8/9 years
6-7 | 7 -8 | 8-9 yearss
Second
Third
Pre-adolescence
Adolescence
9,10 e 11/12 years
12,13 e 14/15 years
9- 10 | 1 0- 11 | 11-1 2 years
12-13 | 13-14 | 14-15 years
59
PROYECTO HEMISFÉRICO
APPENDIX III
“When they elaborate the project of instructing the child or an
adolescent, his parents, teachers and other adults have enough power to
impose a regular attendance to school, certain respect towards school
discipline, certain work and a frequent assessment of the things to be
undertaken.
This does not guarantee that some learning’s should be produced. To
make something learnt to someone that lacks all type of wish and interest
is even much more difficult than “making a donkey drink even though he
is not thirsty”. That is why, the teachers devote great part of their time to
motivate their students, to create or maintain the wish of learning. They
know that they need the active cooperation of the children and the
adolescents to instruct them. They expect the parents to behave in the
same sense, before the entrance to the school as well as during the whole
scholarity. Parents and teachers make a big effort, thus, as from the first
childhood to create and maintain the need to learn, and make it coincide
with the contents and the organization of the curriculum of the
compulsory learning.
It is not sufficient that the boy or the adolescent has desires to learn. It is
not about learning anything at any time and in any way! Adults are
interested in the children and adolescents to be willing to learn: 1) what
the school wants to teach them; 2) at the age and during the period in
which the learning is judged to be necessary; 3) at the price of the school
work that is considered necessary to guarantee a specific level of
excellence; 4) pursuant to the modes imposed by the means of learning,
the methodologies, the quantity of friends per class and the rules of the
school organization.
Parents and teachers are satisfied when the children and the adolescents
make theirs the project conceived, according to the dictates of them, up
to the point of believing that they were chosen with freedom.”
Perrenoud, P. La construcción del éxito y el fracaso escolar. Madrid,
Morata, 1990. P181. Underlined in the original.60
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PEOPLE AND LEARNING
APPENDIX IV
“We call internalization the internal reconstruction of an external
operation. A good example of this process could be found in the
development of the gesture of signaling. At the beginning, this gesture is
nothing more than a failed try to reach something, a movement addressed
towards certain object that denominates the future activity. The child
tries to reach an object located outside its scope, hand, towards this
object, remain suspended in the air. His fingers move as if trying to reach
something. In this initial stage of indicating that it is represented by the
movements of the small, it seems to be indicating another object: That
and nothing else.
When the mother comes to help the child and is aware that her
movement is indicating something, the situation radically changes. The
fact of indicating becomes a gesture for the others. The failed try of the
child originates a reaction, not the object that wishes, but of the person.
Consequently, the primary significance of this failed movement of
grabbing something is established by the others. Only later, when the
child is capable of relation his failed movement of grabbing with the
objective situation as a whole, this movement comes to be interpreted as
an act of indicating. In this situation, a change in the role of the
movement is produced. Of a movement oriented towards an object that
becomes a movement addressed to another person, in the middle of
establishing relations. The movement of grabbing is transformed in the
act of indicating”.
Vigotsky, L. S. El desarrollo de los procesos psicológicos superiores.
México, Grijalbo, 1988. P. 92-93. The underlining is of the original.
61
HEMISPHERIC PROJECT
APPENDIX V
Freud had already treated them as polymorphic perverse. But up to now,
nobody has dreamed with detecting future delinquents in children of two
to three years old that present “affective coldness, tendency to the
manipulation, cynism and aggression”, and they are impulsive, not docile
and have a “low morality index”. This conclusion of a French study,
however, inspired a pre-project of the law over prevention of
delinquency that submitted the Minister of the Interior, Nicolás Sarkozy.
As from the six years, even medications and psycho-stimulants could be
supplied to them. It seems that the polymorphic perversity is transferring
to the adulthood.
The disciplinary society, that studied by Foucault and pre-announced by
Bentham, has never reached that far. Its normalized “garfios” back now
at the act of the potency and find in childhood a fertile land of operation.
This reminds to Spielberg in “Minority Report”: in Washington, in 2054,
the future can be predicted and the guilty parties can be condemned
before committing the crime. The construance of the childhood under this
predictive-pathologic measure is, by itself, a pathology.
But the deepest question is another one. An untrusted look over a
child, that creates in the act, a non reliable child, and even worse, a child
that does not trust even in himself. This states the bases for the alteration
of the behavior: Thus, we shall always be before the self-fulfilled
prophecy, since to watch out potential “delinquents” shall contribute to
be developed as such. There is no neutrality in the look.
Children become what are proposed to be by the eyes that look at them.
In fact, they attack the human nature in its genesis, to directly terminate
it, or change it according to the own codes of normality. It is the
experience to which it is launched, the manipulative fever of the time. It
shall not be long until the potential delinquents shall be detected by
genetic studies, before its birth. If a future Hitler were detected, Should it
be necessary to extermiante him in advance?62
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SUJETOS Y APRENDIZAJE
Shall we exterminate, not only the life, but also expurgate in a surgery,
all that is considered to be inconvenient? So, no final lawsuit should be
waited to. We shall condemn ourselves, as species, before beginning to
live.
By Enrique Valiente Noailles in La Nación,
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/edicionimpresa/suplementos/enfoques/nota.asp?nota_id=787765
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Subjects & learning
MIN IS TE R IO DE E DUCA CIO N,
CIE NC IA Y TE CN OL OG IA
ORGANIZACION DE LOS ESTADOS AMERICANOS
AGENCIA INTERAMERICANA PARA LA
COOPERACION Y EL DESARROLLO